The present invention relates to a bill handling machine for receiving, storing, and dispensing bills.
Automated teller machines (hereafter referred to as ATMs) are used for deposits and withdrawals from and to customers in financial institutions and the like. The ATM has a built-in bill handling machine for receiving, storing, and dispensing bills. One typical example of the bill handing machine is a cash recycling type that allows received bills to be recycled for subsequent dispensing during another transaction. The cash recycling-type bill handling machine receives and dispenses bills as follows.
During a deposit, the bill handling machine discriminates denominations and genuineness of bills received from a bill in-out slot. A bill assumed to be genuine is stored in a temporary stocker. The other bills are returned to the bill in-out slot. This operation is referred to as “received bill count”. After a user confirms the amount of deposit, the bill handling machine takes the bills stored in the temporary stocker and stores them in storing boxes for recycling (hereafter referred to as “recycle boxes”) corresponding to denominations. Concurrently, the ATM notifies a host computer of the deposited amount, the account information, and the like. This operation is referred to as “received bill collection”. During a withdrawal, the bill handling machine feeds bills equivalent to the specified amount to the bill in-out slot from the recycle boxes corresponding to the denominations.
Bills supplied to the bill handling machine may include those not suited for recycling. Such bills include, for example, badly damaged genuine bills, false bills, and questionable bills suspected to be false after the discrimination. When these bills are found during the received bill count, they are returned to the bill in-out slot. When these bills are found during the received bill collection, they are collected in a collection box called a reject box provided independently of the recycle box. Bills in the reject box are not used for the subsequent recycling. For example, JP-A No. 051050/2003 discloses the structure and operations of the above-mentioned cash recycling-type bill handling machine.